No Longer Just An App, Social Video Service ShowYou Leaps From Mobile To Web

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Social video browsing app ShowYou has often been referred to as something like a “Flipboard for video content,” but now, that comparison may no longer be as apt. The company today is bringing its signature video grids, which contain all the videos you’ve liked or shared, to a notable new platform: the web. No longer confined to mobile phones and tablets, ShowYou isn’t just an “app” like Flipboard anymore, it’s a service.

Alongside ShowYou’s arrival on the web, the startup has also beefed up its search engine using social signal data to return more accurate and timely results.

ShowYou, in case you aren’t a user, is one of the many new services competing in the social video space. It aggregates the videos your friends are sharing on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo, while also offering up other channels featuring popular videos and those from specific publishers or individuals.

Today, the company is tracking over 1 billion pieces of what it calls “social signal data” (e.g. tweets and posts from friends) for nearly 40 million videos. While for iPhone and iPad users, the service has been a fun way to browse, collect and share video content with friends, that content, until now, has remained somewhat trapped in the application. Friends using Android or those without smartphones, couldn’t find and follow your video collections. Now they can.

With the web grids, ShowYou is expanding on the latest version of the iPad app introduced in February, which created “profile grids” for each user to aggregate all of their activity, including both likes and shares of videos on ShowYou and on third-party social services.

These grids have now been ported to HTML5, allowing them to work across any number of devices, including mobile, tablet and PC. However, the website at www.showyou.com isn’t being opened up for everyone – it’s invite-only to start. Current ShowYou users will be able to invite friends via Facebook or email. Then, using a following model similar to Twitter, ShowYou users can find and follow others in the new web version, or set their profiles to private if they don’t want the videos they share showing up online.

According to founder Mark Hall, the decision to expand to the web is an effort to help grow the service even larger. Already one of the top apps operating in the space, with average sessions clocking in around 30-40 minutes among active users, Hall says the company is focused on driving “durable, organic growth” for the service. “The launch of Showyou on the web today is the first step we’re taking to accelerate growth,” he says.

“We want to allow all of the people who have our app now to connect with their friends. And not all of them have an iPad or iPhone,” Hall explains. “The web provides a way for people who have the app (and an iPhone or iPad) to connect with their friends and share videos with [their friends] who may not have the app,” he says. In addition, by building an HTML5 version of the service, ShowYou is now poised to expand to other mobile and tablet platforms, he adds.

Also new today is a improved search engine feature, which goes live across iPhone, iPad and web. The company says results will be more relevant, accurate and timely than it was previously.

The updated version of the ShowYou site and new features are launching this morning, at 9 AM PT.